Unit Types
The following is an explanation of the capabilities of the various types of military unit available to you. =Army= Conscripts Most nations have at one point or another used conscripts as a part of their forces, they are cheap, but not as well trained as standard soldiers and often not as well equipped, however in an emergency they are better than nothing and used right can swing a battle in your favour. Infantry The brunt of war for thousands of years has fallen on these chaps, the infantry are your primary foot soldiers and are essential to any ground war. Anti-tank infantry With the invention of the tank in 1916 ways had to be quickly invented to dispatch them without having to resort to another tank or a large anti-tank gun. These first came in the form of anti-tank rifles, but as armour grew stronger and technology progressed, the anti-tank rocket was born. Paratroopers First mentioned by Benjamin Franklin ("Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, so that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?"), paratrooper forces were seriously thought of during the First World War by British Winston Churchill and Americans Major Lewis H. Brereton and his superior Brigadier General Billy Mitchell however it would not be until 1927 that the first actual paradrop would take place, by Italian paratroopers. German forces perfected the art of the paradrop assault during their opening moves in the Second World War, and US and British forces used their own paratroops during the closing stages, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Paratroopers are prone to the climatic conditions (Paratroopers may drift away from their designated Drop Zone) as well as the possibility of their transport being intercepted by anti-air defences, once behind enemy lines it is imperative that some form of supply route is established to them before they run out of the limited supplies they take with them and are overrun. Marines With a history stretching back to Roman times, the Marines are a multi-role form of special forces, primarily used for attacks from the sea, they are amongst the most well-trained military forces in the world. Amongst the British forces alone, the green beret is something deeply coveted by most. Well trained, tough and stealthy, they are a force to be reckoned with. Light tank Primary designed for infantry support and scouting, the Light tank is a fast, lightly armoured vehicle which can hold its own against most infantry but would struggle against heavier tanks. Following their peak in the Second World War, the role of the Light tank would soon be replaced by that of the Armoured Personnel Carrier and Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Medium tank The Medium tank is usually the successful combination of speed, armour and firepower, Cruiser and Cavalry tanks can also fall into this catagory although they tend to be less well armoured in an attempt to increase speed to exploit breakthroughs in enemy lines. Medium tanks would eventually merge with the Heavy tanks to form Main Battle Tanks. Heavy tank Originally designed for the role of breaking through enemy lines, Heavy tanks proved more useful in the role of defence. The differences between Light, Medium and Heavy are more often than not more tactical than weight, with Light Tanks designed for hitting infantry and lightly armoured targets and Heavy tanks designed for smashing through Medium tanks and fortifications. In the post-war years, the ever increasing gun size of the Heavy tank would peak as the weight of the shells grew too much for the loaders to handle, eventually the focus would fall towards more heavily armoured Medium tanks and their eventual successors, the Main Battle Tank. Self-Propelled Guns Following the evolution of artillery over the centuries came the advent of the Self-Propelled Gun, used to get artillery into positions faster than the standard gun carriage and lorry, it would eventually come to the fore in the post-war years as the pace of war increased and the need to be able to move artillery into position fast increased with it. The invention of counter-battery radar would only serve to stress the need for mobility on the battlefield with 'Shoot and Scoot' tactics becoming the favoured into the modern era. Anti-Aircraft Artillery Anti-aircraft Artillery, or AAA, began in its most primitive form during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, when after Paris attempted to break the Prussian siege using balloons to ship in supplies, Gustav Krupp mounted a modified one pounder gun on a horse carriage and named it the 'ballonkanone'. Germany continued the development of the anti-aircraft weapon up until the First World War, whilst most other nations ignored the possibility of the use of aircraft in combat. After German spotter aircraft were noticed calling in more and more accurate artillery fire, the Triple Entente finally began modifying artillery pieces for the use of shooting down aircraft. Increasingly, these anti-aircraft artillery were mounted on the backs of early petrol trucks, and as the years rolled past into the second world war, even on modified tank hulls. The calibre of the guns decreased slightly as the rate of fire increased, but the anti-aircraft artillery still provides an effective deterrent to low flying aircraft. At higher altitudes though, unless employed en masse, flak is not as effective. =Air Force= Fighter Following the Wright brothers flight in 1903, powered aircraft were introduced into the military as spotters and served as such through the first couple of years of the First World War, at first it was a very gentlemanly arrangement with pilots and spotters from either side waving to each other as they passed by over the trenches. Then some crews began trying to shoot each other with pistols, and soon the spotters were armed with rear facing machine guns, and then eventually forward facing ones. After the Germans discovered a way to synchronise the firing of the machine guns with the propellers, the infamous 'Fokker Scourge' of 1915 when the Germans gained aerial superiority over the front-lines. The bi- and tri-plane designs frequently used (with a few exceptions) in the First World War soon gave way to the 'eindeckers' or monoplane design. Now the value of the aircraft was truly realised, the term 'fighters' and 'interceptors' was brought in to describe aircraft designed primarily to kill other aircraft. Finally, in the Second World War the aircraft evolved once again, with the use of Hans von Ohain and Frank Whittles discovery of the jet engine and turbojet engines respectively. Now fighter aircraft could climb higher and faster than their old First World War ancestors, although the early jet engines were prone to occasional bouts of spontaneous explosions. Although guided missiles are in development, the primary fire-power of the Fighter lies in machine guns and cannons. Ground-attack aircraft Used primarily for striking tanks, infantry and other tactical targets, the ground-attack aircraft grew out of modified fighter aircraft, with the exception of the dive-bomber which saw its development in the United States, as they drew together Close Air Support Doctrines with the US Marine Corps in between the wars. Some aircraft were specifically built for the ground-attack role, aircraft such as the Il-2, credited for 'winning the war' by Stalin, and the Ju-87 Stuka which combined with the German Panzers to form a devastating close-air support role, but proved useless as a strategic bomber during the Battle of Britain. Bombers After the invention of the fighter in the first world war, came the invention of the aircraft bomber. Bombs had already been dropped from the sky by balloons and Zeppelins, so it was only a logical step that the early powered 'heavier than air' aircraft would also be used to drop armaments. Usually carried by the spotter or rear machine gunner, the bombs would be dropped manually over the side, again an Italian first, as Italian aircraft dropped their first bombs in the 1911 war for Libya. Larger aircraft were produced to carry heavier armaments, and by the second world war, the Bomber had evolved into its own seperate category from the Fighter, being used primarily for strategic bombardment of civilian or military targets. The first example to the world of the damage an effective bomber group could cause came during the Spanish Civil War at the now famous town of Guernica, when Italian and German bombers killed somewhere in the region of 400 people in a day of bombing. Later raids against the United Kingdom and eventually against Germany added other names to that list, 'The Blitz' 'Coventry' 'Dresden' and 'Copenhagen', as incendiary bombs and butterfly bombs joined standard munitions to create horrendous death tolls. Eventually two famous bombers 'Enola Gay' and 'Bocks Car' entered the history books as they dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Until the perfection of the Long Range Missile and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, bombers (and later artillery) were the only way to drop atomic weapons on targets. =Navy= Destroyer Born with the invention of the torpedo, Destroyers were originally designed to tackle incoming torpedoes but soon become converted to use torpedoes themselves, originally no more than glorified motor-torpedo boats during the First World War they were primarily designed to protect their fleet from torpedo attacks and conduct torpedo attacks on enemy battleships. However, following the creation of the submarine as an effective anti-shipping weapon, the role of the destroyer evolved from torpedo-boat to convoy protector, as hydrophones, depth charges and strengthened bows were placed on the vessels to counter the U-boat threat, however in the inter-war period the popular theory still had the destroyer as a surface attack vessel, which lead to increased armaments and torpedoes but little in the way of anti-submarine measures. It would not be until the dark days of the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War that the niche for the Destroyer as an anti-submarine unit as well as the creation of Frigates and Corvettes as specialised anti-submarine weapons. Destroyers also found themselves under increasing attack from aircraft and as such improved anti-aircraft weaponry was placed on board. Following the war, the role of the destroyer would evolve again, as guided missiles came to the fore in the late Cold War and Guided Missile Destroyers were invented. Light Cruiser A compromise between the armour and fire-power of a battleship and the speed and manoeuvrability of a destroyer, the Light cruiser came to the fore during the inter-war period when the London Naval Treaty of 1930 made it impossible to build a balanced Heavy Cruiser. Light Cruisers are often well armed against ships and aircraft alike, with Bofors anti-aircraft guns and main cannons of up to six inches. Light cruisers rarely exceeded twelve thousand tonnes whereas Heavy Cruisers could exceed thirty thousand. Battleship From the first wooden hulled sailing ships through to the American Iowa class, the reign of the battleship was long and glorious. Sporting several heavy calibre guns, they were the Queens of the seas and often the sight of one sitting off the coast of a nation was enough to discourage any thoughts of aggression towards the sender, however, during the Second World War the age of the battleship was to come to a crashing end as the aircraft carrier brought aircraft into the seas and submarines brought to bear their own style of warfare. With the crippling of Germany's finest battleship the Bismarck by an ageing Swordfish torpedo bomber and the sinking of HMS Barham by a German U-boat, as well as the wholesale destruction of the mighty Yamato by US aircraft, by the end of the war it is beginning to dawn on naval experts that the age of the battleship is drawing to a close. Aircraft carrier In 1806, Lord Cochrane of the British Royal Navy launched kites from the deck of HMS Pallas to drop propaganda against Napoleon. The kite strings were set alight and when the strings burnt through, the leaflets would land on French soil. Following this first recorded use of flight from a sea going vessel, the Austrians took the next step by launching small Montgolfiere style balloons with bombs on board from the Vulcano in an attempt to bomb the city of Venice, although the attempted failed due to adverse wind direction, one bomb did land within the city. Balloons were also used from ships to spot other vessels and targets during the American Civil War and lead to the creation of 'Balloon carriers' by other nations during the early parts of the First World War, however the invention of the sea-plane in 1910 changed everything, in 1911, the French ship La Foudre was launched, designed to carry seaplanes, and becoming the worlds first aircraft carrier. The British followed with HMS Hermes and then the Americans with the USS Mississippi. The flat-deck carrier that we all know today, came at around the same time, although it was not to be until HMS Argus in 1918, that the first proper all flat-deck carrier was converted, and then the first actual purpose-built flat-top, the Japanese Hōshō was launched in 1922, despite being laid down after HMS Hermes. (The Hermes was delayed by tests, experiments and the old British favourite, budget constraints). At first it was feared that the aircraft carriers would prove vulnerable to battleships, a fact reinforced by the sinking of HMS Glorious by the German battlecruisers, but when aircraft from carriers began sinking battleships it was soon realised what an invaluable weapon the aircraft carrier would be. As the battleship once was the diplomatic 'stick' of nations, now the aircraft carrier group and all the destruction it promises would come to take centre stage. Submarine Submarines were first proposed back in the days of Alexander the Great and indeed it is suggested that he made have made use of an early form of 'diving bell' on reconnaissance missions, however it was not until the American 'Turtle' that the submarine was used as an offensive weapon of its own. However, the 'Turtle's attempt to drill into and sink the British warship HMS Eagle failed, although its later mine-laying mission would kill several sailors but again fail to sink the target (HMS Cerberus), the 'Turtle' was eventually destroyed whilst it sat on its tender vessel in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1777. Following the 'Turtle', many other nations scrambled to invent and perfect the submarine, metal-hulled vessels followed and diesel-electric motors became the favoured form of propulsion over steam power and the invention of the torpedo gave them a deadly armament. The main power in the First and Second World Wars to use and perfect the form of submarine warfare was Germany and their 'unterseeboot' (U-boat) which twice threatened to bring Britain under the threat of starvation, in fact, after the war Winston Churchill would confess that the 'Uboat peril' was one of his primary concerns during the days that Britain stood alone. However, the race between U-boat advances and Anti-submarine advances as well as the land campaign, the US entry into the war and the growing air cover of the Atlantic would stop the Uboats cold at a great cost to their sailors. Until the eventual invention of the nuclear submarine in the 1950s, and even after, diesel electic submarines would roam the waves but with a fatal weakness, they would have to charge their batteries using their noisy diesel engines by either running on the surface or raising a large pipe called a 'snorkel', and whilst they did this, they were vulnerable to enemy attack. Better batteries and quieter engines reduce this risk, but never fully eradicate it. Motor Torpedo Boat Motor Torpedo Boats are small lightly armoured ships that rely on their speed to close and launch their torpedoes at the enemy, designated MBTs by the Royal Navy, Schnellboots by the Kriegsmarine and Patrol, Torpedo (PT) by the US Navy, they were common throughout the war after their invention as torpedo boats in the 1800s. Their mission has not changed since that time, although with the invention of submarines and more accurate gunfire, the role of the MTB will eventually turn to the Fast Patrol Boat (FPB) as a small coastal guard boat, minus the torpedoes but plus a small cannon. =WMDs= None. Yet... Category:Military